My PhD graduation from Indiana University. Two weeks later I started an internship at Discover.

If you know you want to write for a living, few people would advise the arduous journey of PhD work in science. Many SciLancers pursued the PhD with the goal of becoming professors or researchers. The six of us who completed those degrees discovered science writing either late in our graduate work or sometime after finishing our degrees. When lab work lost its luster, we made a career move. (A seventh SciLancer, Robin Mejia (bio), is currently working on a PhD in biostatistics at UC Berkeley.)

I half-jokingly refer to my PhD degree as “the three magic letters.” When I was in the midst of finishing up my PhD in chemistry while making my move toward journalism, a wise journalist offered me a piece of advice that stuck: “Some people in this business will be scared of your PhD.” She warned me that editors might be intimidated by the degree or might assume that I couldn’t write jargon-free prose. Rather than scaring me off, her words helped me focus on proving my worth as a writer, knowing that my PhD wouldn’t clear a path to writing success.

We definitely don’t need a PhD to write about science, and we don’t always make it obvious that we have the degree. SciLancer Jill U Adams (bio) used PhD in her email signature initially to establish a comfort level when she was reporting for outlets such as Nature or The Scientist.But she eventually dropped it because she wanted scientists to avoid using jargon during interviews. “I almost never tell sources that I have my PhD,” says Bryn Nelson (bio), who studied microbiology. “Invariably, the moment I do they raise the level of what they’re saying so high – chemistry, physics, whatever – that it’s basically unintelligible.”

Robin Mejia fell into this trap on her own recently when she interviewed a statistician who has similar research interests. Robin’s source asked whether she should simplify her answers for the audience, and Robin said, “Don’t worry about it. This is great.” But, in retrospect, she says, “I realized that while I understood everything she’d said, we’d both been using a lot of jargon. And it was totally my fault.”

Though her PhD helped Anne Sasso (bio) discover stories that were important in her field (geology), she also found that she was sometimes blind to an angle that a non-specialist built into a great story. “I just skimmed over them because it was basic and no big deal to me,” she says.

Graduate school in science was a plus overall for understanding scientific culture and finding sources, says Jennifer Cutraro (bio), who started out in a PhD program but chose to leave after a master’s degree. Bryn adds: “Writing my dissertation and then having to defend it really helped me learn how to organize my thoughts, back up assertions with evidence, and deal constructively with criticism.”

In the 10 years since I defended my PhD, I’ve found that I rely more and more on the project management skills I learned in graduate school: prioritizing tasks, organizing workflow, and managing deadlines, issues that both scientists and writers deal with every day.

Would we do the PhD all over again if we knew we’d become science writers? Maybe not. But the experience has shaped us so that we can’t imagine our careers any other way.

Sarah Webb writes about science, health, technology and policy for researchers, for the general public and for children. Her work has appeared in Discover, Science News, ScientificAmerican.com, Science, Nature Biotechnology, National Geographic Kids, Science News for Kids and many other publications. Trained as a PhD chemist, she has reported on the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the science and policy of stem cell research and the acoustics of carbon fiber cellos. Sarah also served as the research coordinator for the award winning astronomy exhibits at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee with her husband, son, two cats and a Senegal parrot. Sarah is the Editor in Chief of pitchpublishprosper.com.

5 responses to “PhDs in the science writing ecosystem”

Sarah,
I mean Dr. Webb… *clears throat* :-). These thoughts really hit the nail on the head! Its such a crap shoot the decision to add titles or not when navigating normal world with a PhD. The PhD path in a hard science is really quite unique (for lack of a better term). Out side of bench science academic life- having these types of terminal degrees can almost be limiting when trying to get a ‘regular’ job- which happens to pay way more. Either way- I enjoyed this- I am happy I came across your blog. Good stuff.

Thanks for your post. Plotting a major career switch after “all that school” (as my mom puts it) feels pretty unorthodox, and it’s encouraging to hear from you and others who have already made the leap. As a soon-to-be PhD in contemporary literature and theory, I don’t quite understand the struggle of the would-have-been scientist, but I had to smile at your picture and caption. I totally get it.

My sister has a humanities PhD, and, yes, it’s a little different, but not dramatically so. Any time you’ve immersed yourself for that long in a topic, it’s a big transition to move back into “the outside world.” Best of luck.

I love the book you and the other SciLancers have put together. It is a great resource.

Your post hit the nail on the head. I too have a terminal degree, in biology, with MANY years of postdoctoral training. I didn’t know I wanted to write for a living, while I was spending so much time on the lab bench. But, for years I have been telling colleagues and superiors that I wanted to communicate science for the general public. I always wanted to write. I remember reading The Writer Magazine at my local news stand as a teenager, but my ego and my fear got in the way.

It has taken me a very long time to discover what I really love about science. It’s learning new and interesting things, and communicating them to people. I always loved starting a new project, not because it was something new, but because I got to read all those great papers, digest them, learn something new, and aggregate them into new presentations.

I figure the best way to sate my passion for science and learning, while being able to start something new on a regular basis, is to become a science writer. The SciLancers book and this website have helped a lot. But I still need more. I’m looking for mentors that could be guides. I guess, I’m coopting your thread to ask for help with finding mentors and building my tribe.

Hi– thank you for your comment. I think you’re in good company. Several of us (both within SciLance and in the broader science writing community) have been discussing mentorship and how we can help other science writers meet and build their own small online communities. We haven’t figured it out, but we’d like to help if we can. Kendall discussed this a little last week in her most recent Tribes Report post. If you haven’t seen it, definitely check it out.